A new computer may be understood in the sense that it is introduced within a network. The computer is a new member within the network, but needs not to be new in the sense of being unused. It may be possible to move, and shift computers within different networks. Once the computer is connected to a network it is new until it has been configured. The computer may as well be understood as a new server, or just a server.
In computer environments with a plurality of computers, such as environments implementing blade server technology, it is necessary that the system administrator has knowledge about all installed computers and services or sets of services. Further, the deployment of new servers should be possible without any human interaction and within minimum time. Booting of new servers should be possible within short time.
A server may stand for a computer (i.e., a processor with memory) that executes the service. A set of servers is made up of at least one computer, or server (e.g., with a processor and memory).
Computers may provide services to service customers. A service may stand for software that is part of a business application, for example, a database node, an application component, a J2EE engine, an Internet portal, etc. A set of services may stand for at least one service. Conveniently, a set of services may make up an Enterprise Service Architecture (ESA).
To provide reliable services or sets of services, complex network architectures are necessary. The costs in such data centers are growing exponentially with the complexity of the installation. New services and infrastructure, such as new computers, require manual labor and are cost intensive. Also, changes within the environment, as well as changing requirements of the services, require manual labor.
Installing new services or sets of services, as well as meeting increased requirements for existing services, often requires adding new servers, computers and/or services to a data center. The installation causes many actions to be carried out and an unpredictable time is needed. In particular, in a computing on demand approach, the computers and servers have to be installed quickly. The actions taken to provide a computer within a computer network are mostly standardized. In a productive environment, which is a computer environment installed for a customer to provide a set of services, these tasks have to be carried out quickly, as down time is expensive. In today's environments, all tasks are done manually by the system administrators.
Furthermore, during installation of a new server within a server rack, current methods need to boot the server manually or automatically at least twice. The boot process consumes a lot of time, as large memory blocks are used in current servers, which are checked during each boot. This consumes a lot of time.
The Total Costs of Ownership (TCO) could be decreased by introducing methods for automatically installing new computers within a computer network within a short time. In the case of a large number of services and/or servers that are to be deployed, bringing up a new server requires manual interaction and time. The Total Cost of Ownership of computer networks is thus increased. Service level agreements within productive environments, such as maximum down time, maximum response time, maximum repair time and many others, are subject to time limitation due to boot processes.